My husband was a contributor to the firmware in the earliest personal computers made by Commodore, and was VP of software for Atari for 12 years. 

Now I’m going to brag for a minute.  The Commodore 64 was the single biggest selling model of personal computer. Ever.  And his work was included in it, and the part of the reason that MOS technology produced the Commodore Pet in the first place was that MY HUSBAND told his father that personal computers were a good idea.  

 Remember this was in the days of magnetic tapes and Telex machines. And terminals. I made pocket money by putting data on punch cards for an econ professor, so he could feed them into a FORTAN program.  I started writing papers in 1980 using a terminal in the engineering building that led to a UNIVAC computer (size of a boiler)  somewhere.  I finished my senior thesis (three years late, long story there) on a ‘luggable’ C-64, and with my then-fiancee’s help,  used a 4-color pen plotter to produce graphs on interest rates that impressed my advisors in the Barnard Economics department.

So my husband was a most excellent IT guy–consumer electronics were his business. He still is the goto guy for his brothers and for me. And I’ve gotten very lazy as a result. Especially since he retired quite a while ago, and is available almost 24/7. 

So I’ve been hollering “Honey, can you fix my computer”  every time I get stuck.

It’s no way to keep up with current technology. I am convinced that the reason Apple became so big is that first, they understood that technology had to be easy to use, and second, that there was a lot of money to be made in hand-holding. If you have lovable  IT people, whether its a husband, someone you pay to come to the house, a nice kid in Austin on the phone, or a phalanx of people in matching T-shirts in a futuristic white store.